This was only the beginning of the child’s long life’s phobia of people. She wasn’t one of those afflicted with an exaggerated fear of germs and contagion. For the rest of her life, however, she was to be repulsed by the smell of humans. She claimed that all humans bore an odor akin to that which she had smelled in the places she had passed through when she was dead. Where she had gone she revealed from the rooftop that day within the limited ability of a three-year-old’s vocabulary, in Spanish and English. Meanwhile everyone below was either genuflecting or paralyzed, and crossing themselves over and over as she spoke.

“¡Hija, hija!” Father Jerome called up to her, hands clenched in the air. “Is this an act of God or of Satan that brings you back to us, that has flown you up to the roof like a bird? Are you the devil’s messenger or a winged angel?”

At that point Sofi, despite her shock, rose from the ground, unable to tolerate the mere suggestion by Father Jerome that her daughter, her blessed, sweet baby, could by any means be the devil’s own. “Don’t you dare!” she screamed at Father Jerome, charging at him and beating him with her fists. “Don’t you dare start this about my baby! If our Lord in His heaven has sent my child back to me, don’t you dare start this backward thinking against her; the devil doesn’t produce miracles! And this is a miracle, an answer to the prayers of a brokenhearted mother, ¡hombre necio, pendejo …!”

“Ay, watch what you say, comadre!” one of Sofi’s friends whispered, pulling Sofi from the priest, who had staved off her attack with his arms over his head. “Oh, my God!” others uttered, crossing themselves at hearing Sofi call the priest a pendejo, which was a blasphemy, crossing themselves all the more because although the verdict was still open as to whether they were witnessing a true miracle or a mirage of the devil, Sofi’s behavior was giving way to the latter—after all, calling the holy priest a pendejo and hitting him!

The crowd settled down, some still on their knees, palms together, all looking up at the little girl like the glittering angel placed at the top of a Christmas tree. She seemed serene and, though a little flushed, quite like she always did when she was alive. Well, the fact was that she was alive, but no one at the moment seemed sure.

“Listen,” she announced calmly to the crowd, “on my long trip I went to three places: hell …” Someone let out a loud scream at this. “To pulgatorio and to heaven. God sent me back to help you all, to pray for you all, o si no, o si no …”

“O si no, ¿qué, hija?” Father Jerome begged.